Aziz Ali Dad

High Asia comprises the regions of the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Pamirs, the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau. Nestled among the greatest massifs in the world, this region is home to diverse cultures, languages and worldviews. Despite harsh…

The contemporary society of Gilgit is undergoing an existential crisis begotten by drastic changes and ruptures caused by the forces of modernisation. For the last four decades it has been exposed to a medley of forces which are exogenous,…

Appropriation of revolutionNormally, it is ideas that change our worldview and pave the way for a new society, but in our case a cloud of personalities, ethos of culture, power relations and social structures robs words of their essential…

Such is the power of love that it animates a cosmic music, which encompasses the self, the world and the universe. That is why Maulana Rumi could hear the rhythm produced by the hammer of a goldsmith and began to dance in ecstasy. Mathnawi…

Farooq Sulehria in his column, ‘The vulture king’ (May 3, 2014) cogently laid bare the discourse of irrationality in Bano Qudsia’s novel ‘Raja Gidh’, which was written at a time when General Ziaul Haq introduced a regressive ideology to…

Gilgit-Baltistan is home to diverse linguistic, religious and ethnic groups. During the last two decades the word culture has become very popular among the people there, the youth in particular. That is why culture is invoked by different…

If personal whims and dogmatic worldview are given institutional support, the ultimate result will be the expansion of dogmatism in self, state and society. This is precisely the case with the edicts issued by Maulana Mohammed Khan Sherani…

Politics is an important site where different forces struggle to find a role in the power structure of state and society. Since politics is a collective activity, anything that broadens its sphere of influence becomes a means to an end.…

Creativity is a complex process, and cannot be captured in clear-cut formulas. It is the absence of such formulas that forces writers and artists to nurture different faculties to express their indefinable experiences in symbolic language…

Historically, different cultural groups of what is now Pakistan followed diverse origins, but the creation of Pakistan brought heterogeneous cultural identities under the identity of a single state. Being a post-colonial state, Pakistan…